Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST) is the art of deep listening. The old physics says that change happens only when a force is applied. New physics says that what is observed can’t help but to change; that the observer and the observed are inseparable, forever in relationship with each other.

To learn BCST is to learn about the quality of observation – how a subtle change of approach to the human system can bring about a profound shift.

In this way,  BCST is about allowing the body to tell its story. Often times the result of such listening is a deep unwinding, a return to health and vibrance, and the integration of symptoms back into the whole.

​Through this work we allow ourselves to attune to the body's natural rhythms. By dissolving the temptation to try to find a solution for the body's 'problems', BCST gives space and allowance for a deeper process to take over. The inner physician achieves what the outer physician cannot.

BCST’s Origin Story

It’s a flaw of the human Psyche to stop short when truly imagining something’s (or someone’s) origin. Let’s take for example rap music. We might say it began with The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash in the late ‘70s. Then we discover DJ Kool Herc, which takes us back to preacher records from many decades earlier, taking us back to slavery, to expression against oppression. This might take us back once more to Africa, to words laid over the first beats, to the origin of sound itself.

Similarly, when imagining the beginnings of CranioSacral Therapy we might stop short at Dr John Upledger, who took the work out of Osteopathy and taught it to everyday people so that they could use simple healing techniques at home (originally to help with Autistic Spectrum Disorder in children). Upledger’s work opened the field to others such as Hugh Milne (Visionary CST), James Jealous and Franklyn Sills (Biodynamic CST) to further develop ways to follow the body’s process back to wholeness.

Before this, however, was the experimental visionary, William Sutherland, who posited that the cranium was in fact made of 22 bones rather than the one bone that conventional wisdom at the time simply called the ‘skull’. To prove this he experimented on himself using a helmet that he crafted to isolate and restrict particular bones to see what might happen. He even requested that his wife report back on changes in his temperament. These experiments led him to experience the constriction and release of CerebroSpinal Fluid (CSF), something very familiar to the modern practitioner of CST.

Prior to this, in the 19th century, A.T. Still broke away from the medical establishment’s use of drugs, amputations and bleeding techniques and towards methods of (relatively) gentle body manipulation to restore health and wellness. The founder of modern Osteopathy, the tenants of his work stress treating the patient as a whole person and not as a disease entity.

It’s generally accepted that the history of BCST stops here. And with our chronological, causal minds, rightfully so. If, however, we look at this from a wider lens we might see threads of something ancient attempting to come through. Here’s an except from the Dao De Jing, an ancient Chinese text dating from at least 2,500 year ago, that feels like somewhere closer to the essence of the teachings:

If you’re familiar with the Dao De Jing, you’ll know it as a place where the mind gets to sit in the tensions of its own contradictions. Lao Zi is said to have taken great pains to give the Dao a name, knowing what dangers are inherent in labels and reductionist thinking. Instead, he invites us back to the mystery, to not the mechanics of nature, but the force that animates it.

This force is what Sutherland referred to as ‘The Breath of Life’, but he could just as easily have called it the Dao. To guide someone back to this essence of creation and health is, in my opinion, at the heart of the work of BCST.

In Practice

The session begins seated, with a brief discussion of personal history and presenting symptoms. At some point we move to a massage table where the hands-on part of the session begins. BCST touch is gentle and non-invasive and implied in the work is the permission for practitioner and client to speak to anything that feels uncomfortable in any way.

In fact, it’s often this discussion that gives rise to the next place that the session would like to go. Much like Process Work, when we lean into the disturbing force we often find a wealth of untapped potential energy waiting to be explored.

In a BCST session, we are often waiting for the deeper intelligence of the human body to begin to take over. Everything up until that point is simply the creation of the relational field. After this point, however, there is often a very natural understanding that we are clearly not in charge of the healing process. There can be deep layers of unwinding of body and psyche as we are gently led by the movements of the third thing that exists beyond practitioner/client or even body/mind.

Here, we begin to get in touch with The Tide: the three levels of experience articulated by Sutherland. The Cranial Rhythmic Impulse (CRI) is closer to the surface of our experience and our everyday existence. The Mid-Tide feels like a drop below this level where we begin to feel the deeper patterns and shapes at play. And sometimes we even touch a deeper layer referred to as The Long Tide: something closer to the essence of the soul where deep release and rejuvenation happen very naturally.

As we come to the end of the session there is a brief time of integration as we discuss what occurred and what the intelligence of the body might be trying to teach us for our everyday life. Those who have been around this work for a while begin to develop a deeper reverence for the body not just as a vehicle to carry the persona around, but as a soulful wisdom keeper with endless capacity to teach at the deepest level.